Who expected the search wars to open a new front involving WiFi? Google, Bing & Yahoo have each just announced free WiFi promotions of various sorts.

Google, which previously said it would provide free WiFi on all Virgin America flights through early next year, is now going to provide it at 47 US airports through the end of the year. A partial list includes “Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely,” says the press release. (Here’s the full list.)

According to Fortune:

Upon signing in, users will be asked if they want to set Google as their homepage or try the Google Chrome browser.

The company is also running a charity campaign to raise money for three nonprofit groups: Engineers without Borders, One Economy Corporation and Climate Savers Computing Initiative. When Google WiFi users first log on, the landing page will offer them the option of donating to the organizations. Google will match donations of up to $250,000 per airport.

For its part, Bing and JiWire will offer free WiFi at a broad range of hotspots in airports and hotels, in exchange for users conducting a search on Bing. It’s part of JiWire’s “Ads for Access” program. According to MediaPost’s article:

Microsoft’s Bing and JiWire will announce Monday an advertising campaign, along with the results, that lets consumers gain free WiFi Internet access at participating hot spots in exchange for one search on the engine.

Supported by JiWire’s mobile advertising network, which reaches about 20 million unique consumers monthly, Bing’s nationwide campaign runs across WiFi hotspots in airports and hotels.

The campaign aims to make more people aware of Bing and allow them to try the search engine, according to David Blumenfeld, senior vice president of strategy and business development at JiWire. “We’re all creatures of habit, so giving away free Internet access in exchange for one search on Bing is a great way to change user behavior,” he says.

Finally, Yahoo is providing free WiFi in New York’s Times Square, which also has a mobile angle. In 2006, Yahoo had a deal with Starwood hotels that subsidized WiFi in the chain’s Sheraton hotels. That deal is no longer in force however.

All these efforts are welcome but they’re only temporary. Eventually there will be ubiquitous WiFi/4G connectivity that will enable people out in the world to connect at higher speeds, hopefully for lower cost, than they can today through traditional WiFi networks.

Bing has announced a couple additions to its mobile browser today: expanded NFL information and airline flight status reports.

The NFL feature works by typing in a team or player’s name, and provides stats, scores, and schedule details. Bing also says you’ll get “eal-time updates on the plays” while a game is being played.

The flight status feature shows departure and landing times when you type in an airline and flight number.

Bing also says it has improved its mobile browser for touch-based devices, and added a new Movies feature with local showtimes and trailers.

Bing’s mobile browser is available at m.bing.com.

The Bing Search Blog has announced a new mobile voice search capability that competes with, and even one-ups the more well known mobile voice search tools from Google.

The Bing voice search tool has three capabilities:

• search Bing by speaking a query
• dial a contact’s phone by speaking the number
• compose a text message by speaking it

As eWeek’s Google Watch points out, that last feature — the ability to speak a text message — is something that Google voice search doesn’t offer natively. (There are some Android apps that make it possible, however.)

These three features were announced and demoed earlier this year, and today are finally available on the new Samsung Intrepid phone from Sprint Wireless.

You can watch a short demo video of Bing’s new mobile voice search app below. The text messaging tool is pretty cool.

We’re really just at the beginning of the era of “mobile search.” Even what we think of as “search” will be dramatically altered by innovations in mobile. In this first phase the transfer of what might be called the “query box” (and related links) into mobile is complete. In time, however, we many even come to see that image — the white box with the search button to the right — as a kind of metaphor for something more intangible (i.e., directed intent) that can be fulfilled in a variety of ways.

Google is already the dominant player in search on mobile devices and certainly on smartphones, the most active category of mobile users. (It remains to be seen how the Microsoft-Verizon “default” deal will affect the market as it rolls out.) However, recognizing the challenges and limitations of manually keying in queries on mobile devices, the major engines all have voice interface/input options:

• Google (uses its own speech recognition technology)
• Yahoo (uses Vlingo for mobile oneSearch)
• Microsoft (uses Tellme, which it acquired in 2007)

Voice as a search tool will only continue to get better. Tellme recently released survey results that show favorable consumer attitudes toward voice on mobile devices. As the services become more reliable and accurate — they’re already very good — consumers will increasingly use them to retrieve content and information because they’re faster and easier than manually keying in queries.

Another less obvious form of search involves mobile apps on the iPhone and Android, and other smartphone platforms increasingly, which show the closest gas station, ATM or cafe “nearby” using the phone’s built in location awareness capabilities. Yelp and AroundMe on the iPhone are just two examples among a number of apps:

Google itself has an app on Android called Places Directory, which is almost identical and de-emphasizes traditional “search.” But these apps, which don’t actually require any query to be entered, are just as much “search” in terms of the user’s mindset as manually inputting “sushi, new york” in Google.com on a PC.

Another step away from the query box, but still search, is represented by some of the product search tools and services now on smartphones, such as as the Amazon or ShopSavvy apps for Android devices.

These are two examples of a growing trend involving the camera as search tool or input device. They allow you to take a picture using the phone’s camera or use a barcode scanner through the camera to obtain price information, reviews and, in the case of ShopSavvy, where to buy the item locally. The mobile version of Google Product Search (on Android) offers barcode scanning as well. Similarly, use of the camera to capture QR codes to gain additional information can be seen as a kind of search, although it starts to get a bit fuzzy in my expanded definition (”directed intent”) because users may be responding to a call to action and not necessarily actively looking for something.

Yet a further step away from the query box on mobile devices comes in the form of “augmented reality.” Augmented reality apps are starting to pop up on smartphones: Layar, TwitARound and several others are in development. Most recently a company called Acrossair in the UK has developed an augmented reality app for the iPhone. It helps find the nearest underground stop and related information about routing.

As people direct their cameras to find the nearest tube station or, in a future app, to get reviews about a restaurant across the street, they are “searching” for information — albeit by other means. This and some of the other methods described above provide faster, richer or more immediate ways to get information and content than would otherwise be accessed through a traditional query box and related links.

Stepping back, we can start to see how “search” on mobile devices will diversify and broaden beyond the narrow way we tend to think of it today. In this broader world of directed intent that can be fulfilled in a number of ways, depending on the situation and the item or need in question, we move beyond the search box. And if “mobile search” already seems to be locked up by Google, this broader landscape that uses location-awareness, barcode scanners, image recognition and augmented reality is wide open.

The Live Search Blog announced they have added video search results and baseball scores to Live Search Mobile. I decided to take a few screen shots of live.com on my iPhone:

Live Search Mobile Video Results:

Live Search Mobile Baseball Info:

Why the Mets? Well, I am a Met fan, or at least, I try to be.

Tellme has been in the speech, automated directory assistance and “voice search” segment for a decade. Two years ago the company was acquired by Microsoft for roughly $800 million. Since that time the two companies have been working on integration and developing next-generation services. Tellme powers Microsoft’s LiveSearch 411, among other services.

Today, two years to the day after the acqusition, Tellme made two related announcements about improved speech technology and an upgraded mobile user experience. (Here’s the enterprise-facing release.) On the consumer side of the equation, Tellme has introduced a “one-button” approach to initiate calls, dictate text messages and conduct searches with Microsoft Live Search:

The new service puts many of the most popular phone functions behind a single button.  Windows phone users just press the side button of their phone to:

• Send a text by saying “text” to open a text box, then speak the text message and send to call anyone in their contact list
• Initiate a call simply by saying “call” and then the name of anyone in their contact list
• Search the Web with Microsoft Live Search by speaking your request, such as “weather in San Francisco, California”, “Pizza in Kansas City” or “mother’s day gift ideas”

The Live Search mobile client has had a voice front end for some time, but that’s now been upgraded. Tellme’s technology is also being integrated at the network/OS level into Windows Mobile 6.5, which will reportedly ship later in the year.

Theoretically anything that you could do with search on the handset using Microsoft Live Search you can now do with voice faster and more easily. I saw the service demo’d briefly and it appeared to work very well. Tellme is arguing in its press materials that voice offers a better user experience than “touch” (i.e., the iPhone). However the iPhone has voice search clients available from Vlingo and Google. Vlingo is also behind Yahoo’s voice-powered oneSearch client.

There is clearly enormous potential for voice search to transform the mobile user experience and increase search volume dramatically. So far that has not happened. But the promise is there. Tellme’s deeper integration into Windows Mobile could represent a strategic differentiator for Microsoft and Windows Mobile phones but we’ll have to see once we get a chance to “live” with the service.

Tellme’s capabilities will also be an integrated feature of the new Kumo/Kiev/Live Search successor in mobile. I have some additional thoughts in a post at LocalMobileSearch.

How many people are familiar with Microsoft’s Voice Search tool “Live Search 411?” It’s a powerful yet not well-known way to do local search from any phone (1-800-CALL-411 or 1-800-225-5411). Conceptually, it’s exactly like Goog-411 but has more considerably more content and capabilities. Built on the Tellme infrastructure it can provide:

• Local business search
• Driving directions
• Weather
• Sports scores
• Stock quotes
• Gas prices
• Movie information
• Travel and airlines information

Today traffic information, from INRIX, was added to that list.

Live Search 411 will presumably be rebranded in June and become part of a more holistic Microsoft search offering that will include the PC, voice portal (Live Search 411), WAP search and mobile client.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That’s what it must feel like right now at Twitter, which has become incredibly hot over the past several months. The pressure is building. Who will buy it? How will it be monetized? What sort of tool or service will it evolve into? These are subjects now of almost daily speculation.

Today AllThingsD reports that Microsoft and Google are once again doing battle to become the exclusive paid search partner for Twitter:

After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.

As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, most especially around a deal to become the one to exclusively deliver search ads to Twitter properties.

The last time the two “internet giants” faced off was over the Verizon Wireless default search relationship. Microsoft won, many speculate, with large revenue guarantees.

A similar dynamic, assuming the AllThingsD story is accurate, could be at play with Twitter. Microsoft may be willing to offer revenue guarantees to keep Twitter away from Google. However, Google has many more advertisers than Microsoft and could better monetize Twitter search on a pure click basis.

One might also see the winner of this competition as a potential buyer (one day) of Big T. As AllThingsD points out, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone worked for Google and so that may bias him in either direction. It’s not entirely clear.

Stay tuned for more exciting Tweets.

Microsoft (so far) has been unable to buy Yahoo or Yahoo search assets, so it instead continues to take search talent away from the company. Last year Microsoft successfully lured engineering lead Qi Lu from Yahoo to become head of the company’s Online Services Group. Redmond also recently nabbed Sean Suchter from Yahoo.

Now Bloomberg and CNET report that another Yahoo executive, Larry Heck, will be working on Microsoft search. Heck was, until now, Vice President of the Search & Advertising Sciences at Yahoo Labs. Before that he was Vice President of R&D at Nuance Communications, “where he led teams responsible for natural language processing, speech recognition, voice authentication, and text-to-speech synthesis.”

This suggests more emphasis on voice search (read: mobile) at Microsoft. But the company has an overabundance of speech assets already, having acquired Tellme in March, 2007.

Tonight at CES Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made several announcements during his keynote address. In addition to a preview of the Windows 7 OS, Ballmer announced high-profile distribution deals for Live Search. We were unable to write about the deals earlier today due to an embargo.

However, we covered a Reuters report that was issued on one of the deals: a five-year search and advertising partnership with Verizon Wirelesss. The other search distribution agreement is a global “default search” deal with Dell. Microsoft has an official blog post here on the news.

Danny earlier put together the following discussion of the various PC partnerships among the leading search providers.

The Dell/PC Deal

The chart below shows the current distribution deals for various search engines, with share figures from Gartner for the third quarter of 2008:

Dell: Now partnered with Microsoft, which previously had said doing a deal with Dell was too costly. Had partnered with Google in 2006, a deal which produced some controversy because of how Dell pointed people hitting errors to pages dominated with Google ads (see Google & Dell’s Revenue-Generating URL Error Pages Drawing Fire for more). You can see an example of the Google Dell start page here. There’s a good chance existing Dell users will continue to use Google as a start page provider if they’ve customized this page in any way.

HP: Signed a deal with Microsoft last June, but the distribution didn’t begin until this month and is only for North America. HP was previously partnered with Yahoo in North America, in a toolbar deal signed in September 2006. The Yahoo deal to power Yahoo start pages for HP owners in Europe apparently continues.

Apple: Partnered to put Google into the Safari browser way back in 2003, but we’ve found no references to a formal deal being announced (Google sometimes doesn’t announce distribution deals, perhaps to avoid bringing consumer attention to the fact that it buys its way onto desktops). Google also has other deep integration with Apple, such as what our Apple Continues To Integrate Google (& AdSense) Into Software article from last August covers. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, of course, is also part of Apple’s board of directors.

Acer: Apparently remains partnered with Yahoo for global distribution, though a Yahoo Acer start page you used to find here in June 2008 no longer exists. Acer acquired Gateway and Packard Bell in October 2007. Google had a preexisting deal (PDF file) from November 2006 with Packard Bell that seems to continue, with the Google-Packard Bell start page here. Gateway also has a start page here, also through a November 2006 partnership, through it’s not clear if this involved desktop integration.

Lenovo: Partnered with Microsoft in March 2007, which ousted Google as Lenovo’s previous partner. Despite the Microsoft deal being signed in March 2007, Lenovo still cut a deal with Google in August 2007 to use Google as a partner for its Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay project.

Toshiba: Is partnered with Google through a deal that was expanded in January 2007.

The Verizon Deal

Danny and I had a discussion earlier today about which deal was more significant and why. He believed the Dell deal would have greater potential impact and I expressed the view that the Verizon deal was potentially more significant. Regardless, both give Microsoft considerable, additional potential reach — on paper.

First, here’s a chart parallel to the one above reflecting the current state of deals with US mobile operators and their search vendors:

Given that Verizon is the largest American wireless carrier, following its acquisition of Alltel (valued at $28.1 billion), this distribution deal is a potentially major coup for Microsoft, which trails in mobile search — as it does on the desktop. The following chart reflects mobile search market share (comScore, 8/08) in the US:

The irony or paradox of the Verizon-Microsoft mobile search deal is that smartphones are where most of the mobile search activity is happening today. Yet those are the users that the carriers have the least amount of control over and where the “carrier deck” is either marginal or effectively non-existent. Users may simply open a browser and head to the “mobile internet,” visiting whatever sites and search engines they please.

The Verizon deal is, however, multi-faceted and involves WAP/mobile web search via m.live.com, the Live Search client application, as well as placement of a search box on the carrier deck in many instances. The press release describes it this way:

Depending on which device they use, customers will be able to use voice commands and typed queries and even select to use location-aware searches to receive highly relevant search results, including maps, directions, traffic information, information on local businesses, movie theatres and show times, gas prices and weather. In addition, customers will also get search results that include news and entertainment content such as downloadable full-track songs, videos and games. Verizon Wireless customers will be able to access Microsoft Live Search from a device’s home screen, by downloading an application or through Verizon Wireless’ Mobile Web service.

Much of this describes the content and functionality of the Live Search client, an upgraded version of which was also released this evening. My impression from speaking with Microsoft this morning was that the client would be pre-loaded on Verizon handsets, however it may still need to be downloaded in many instances. Google Maps for Mobile is Google’s competitive offering for smartphones. However, the Microsoft client offers a broader range of content types.

The billion dollar question here is whether the default deal will prompt Verizon users to adopt Live Search — or not. There will undoubtedly be some user adoption; the deal has the potential to boost Microsoft’s market share in mobile, but it’s not yet clear how much. Microsoft asserts that its search product is comparable in quality to Google and that it has a better shot at changing user behavior now than in the past. That may be more true of the Live Search client application than Microsoft’s WAP/mobile web search offering.

Mobile search behavior is relatively new and still evolving. Yet it’s remarkable in some sense (or perhaps not) how mobile search share generally tracks share on the PC.

The greatest benefit of the deal may come in the greater credibility and visibility for Live Search and adCenter among agencies and national advertisers. Suddenly Microsoft has access to a mobile population of roughly 80 million users, with all the corresponding targeting possibilities. The company indicated that it will be working closely with Verizon in a collaborative way on mobile advertising (search and display). There are also indications that Microsoft will get access to Verizon user data, especially highly accurate location information.

Microsoft of course wouldn’t discuss deal terms. When the rumor first surfaced that Microsoft was trying to capture the default Verizon search relationship from Google in November this is what Wall Street Journal said:

Microsoft has gotten the mobile carrier’s attention by offering a sweeter deal to put its search service and related advertising on Verizon phones. Microsoft is also offering more generous revenue sharing and a guarantee of substantially higher payments to Verizon, say people familiar with the matter.

Google has been in discussions for months with Verizon to make its search engine the default on most Verizon phones, according to these people.

Verizon is taking something of a risk with Microsoft, which has fewer advertisers than Google or Yahoo. However the carrier must have felt that the quality of the Microsoft mobile search user experience was competitive or it wouldn’t have made this five-year commitment. Cynics and skeptics might assert that Microsoft probably offered a better revenue sharing deal or more guarantees. However that would be speculation.

Regardless, this is a dramatic and aggressive move by Microsoft that seeks to prevent rival Google from becoming dominant in mobile search at such an early stage in the market’s development. Eventually mobile search will surpass search on the PC; it’s only a matter of time. Consequently now is the time for Microsoft to take such bold action if it hopes to be competitive in mobile search.

There’s more coverage and discussion at Techmeme.